Business:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee gave final approval Nov. 11 to a package of tax breaks for Boeing in hopes of landing the company’s new 777X, signing legislation at Seattle’s Museum of Flight at Boeing Field.

General Electric is on the hunt for ways to build more than 85,000 fuel nozzles for its newest jet engine. Instead of assembling them from 20 different parts, it plans to create the units in one piece – with 3D printers.

Defense:

The Navy has suspended two admirals in a broadening bribery scandal that already has ensnared three senior naval officials. Involving charges of prostitution and payoffs, the scandal is the U.S. military’s highest-profile case of officer misconduct this year — part of a trend that has caused deep concern among Pentagon officials.

The U.S. Navy is reeling from a bribery scandal featuring prostitutes and payoffs for classified details on fleet movements, amid concerns the spiraling investigation will ensnare more senior officers.

The rate of military suicides have dropped by 22 percent this year, giving defense officials cautious hope that preventive efforts are working. So far this year, 245 service members have committed suicide. At the same time last year, there had been 316, according to figures obtained by the Associated Press.

Veterans:

Despite rosy platitudes from President Obama on Veterans Day, more than 700,000 former servicemen and women remain waiting for medical benefits owed to them because of a backlogged system that takes an average of 300 days to navigate.

Known as the Doolittle Raiders, the 80 men who risked their lives on a World War II bombing mission on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor were toasted one last time by their surviving comrades and honored with a Veterans Day weekend of fanfare shared by thousands.

For 30 years a campaign group has been tirelessly gathering photographs of the 58,286 American servicemen and women who died during the Vietnam War. Based in Washington, D.C., the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was set up by a group of veterans who wanted to create a memorial from the American people for those who lost their lives during the conflict between 1965 and 1973.

Space:

The International Space Station has had a malware virus courtesy of a Russian cosmonaut’s USB drive, according to Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky. The disclosure was made last week while Kaspersky addressed reporters at a National Press Club event in Canberra, Australia, the Atlantic Wire reported.

NASA has released a spectacular new picture of the Planet Saturn, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft in July. The image was produced as part of The Day The Earth Smiled Project, which was led by Dr. Carolyn Porco. She describes how and why the picture was put together.

Billions of years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere was opaque and the planet’s surface was a vast magma ocean devoid of life. This scenario, says Stanford University professor of geophysics Norman Sleep, was what the early Earth looked like just after a cataclysmic impact by a planet-size object that smashed into the infant Earth 4.5 billion years ago and formed the moon.

The most luminous objects in the universe keep getting more mysterious. Astronomers have discovered a new type of quasar — an incredibly bright galactic core powered by a supermassive black hole — that current theory fails to predict.

Technology:

Scientists are currently competing to create the best invisibility cloak, as imagined in films such as Harry Potter and Star Trek. As yet, no-one has managed to replicate a flexible cloak as worn by the boy wizard, or the cloaking device used by the Kingons to make their ships invisible to another starship’s sensors, but two Canadian scientists have created an invisibility cloak that they say is thin and adaptive to different types and sizes of objects.

International:

Secretary of State John F. Kerry defended the Obama administration’s carrot-and-stick approach to nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying Sunday that the conciliatory strategy needs to be given a chance to work — while vowing that the U.S. is prepared to use force if necessary to keep the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear bomb.

The Department of Defence has confirmed an investigation has been launched into potential allegations of rape carried out on young male sailors, including anal penetration using writing implements and drink containers.

Opinion:

What in the world is happening to senior military officers under the Obama administration? It seems that every week since President Obama took office in 2009, we’ve been hearing that another top leader has been summarily fired, despite his decades of loyal service and valuable experience in protecting the nation.

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